Sir, – Following the widely reported demise last week of Croke Park II, has the Government made its opening gambit in a strategy designed to get a Croke Park III process off the ground?
Your recent lead article (Front page, April 22nd), states the Government intends to make a major concession to middle-income taxpayers in the October budget in order to demonstrate that the era of austerity is drawing to a close. A senior Fine Gael Minister, speaking off the record, is quoted as saying that the concession might be on the tax side. The same Minister warns, however, of a potential difficulty in pursuing such a course of action. Specifically, it would be hard to convince the public service trade unions “to take cuts of €1 billion over three years while sending out a message we are making concessions to middle- income taxpayers”.
Surely, though, that is the precise position in which the Government wants to place the public service unions. It would be extremely difficult for those unions to argue against a Croke Park III agreement that saw cuts in the public sector pay-bill counterbalanced in part by tax cuts for the many public servants on middle-incomes, those same tax cuts benefiting workers in the private sector simultaneously. Or would it be beyond our Government to plot and strategise in such a cynical fashion? – Yours, etc,
PAUL GULLY,
St Lawrence’s Road,
Clontarf, Dublin 3.